THE CALL OF THE WOODS.
Monday.—Even to the most casual observer the day of the week would have been announced by the appearance of the rambling village; the new-budding hedges were remorselessly weighted with household gear, fresh from the tub; the very grassplots were whitened with the same; but the gooseberry bushes were as yet unadorned with extraneous trophies, for as every one knows, a thrifty rustic housewife relegates the washing and “getting up” of fine things to Tuesdays.
The orchard of that popular house of entertainment, known as “The Three Choughs,” the weather-beaten sign of which bore the partly obliterated presentment of a triplet of birds unknown to naturalists—the orchard of “The Three Choughs,” I say, was no exception to the general rule. From the gnarled branches of pear- and plum-tree depended many wavering tokens of Mrs. Cluett’s industry; the clothes lines were weighted with the like; and Alice, her rosy-cheeked daughter, went periodically to and fro from wash-house to hedge with a basket poised on one sturdy hip, or, for the sake of variety, set jauntily aloft on her curly head.
The bar was left to take care of itself; at that hour callers were unlikely. Noontide was past, evening had not yet come; if any stray wagoner or chance bicyclist were in need of refreshment he had but to uplift his voice, or to knock on the worn panels of the door leading from the taproom to Mrs. Cluett’s private premises. Many succeeding generations of knuckles had, indeed, removed the last vestige of paint from the panels in question, and indued them with a fine mellow tint of their own.
Nevertheless Mrs. Cluett was enjoying herself so much in the midst of her suds, so thoroughly absorbed in soaping and kneading and wringing, that such a summons was thrice repeated without effect; and it was not until Alice, returning from one of her expeditions to the hedge, chanced to glance casually at the taproom window that the impatient customer contrived to attract attention.
Seeing a man’s face peering discontentedly through the latticed panes, and hearing a corresponding voice repeatedly shouting, Alice set down her basket and hurried into the house.
“We don’t often have no one callin’ at this time o’ day,” she remarked with a pleasant smile, by way of greeting.
The man gave his order for a pint of beer without noticing the intended apology, and dropped into one of the wooden chairs allotted to customers.
Alice glanced at him askance as she set jug and glass before him. A tall young fellow, not more than twenty-five, with a face browned by sun and wind till it was as dark as a gipsy’s, thick, black hair, good features, and the strangest eyes that the girl had ever beheld in a human face. They were like hawk’s eyes, keen and clear, and with that fixed, far-away look peculiar to the eyes of a bird or beast of prey. Yet the man’s face was not a cruel face, and by-and-by, meeting Alice’s questioning gaze, he smiled hesitatingly.
Alice was a good girl, and had always been well looked after by her mother; but it was part of the business of life, as she conceived it, to enter frankly into conversation with all who chanced to need refreshment at “The Three Choughs;” and she was interested in each, from the oldest customer to the latest and most casual caller.
“Where be come from?” inquired Alice, now propping herself against the lintel of the door, and surveying the stranger with undisguised curiosity.
He wore corduroys and leggings, and yet was no gamekeeper; he carried a small bundle and a sturdy stick, but she felt sure that he was not a tramp.
He jerked his thumb over his shoulder, looking at her for a moment before replying; his words came at last slowly, as though he were unused to much speech.
“Yonder,” he said, “Chudbury way.”
Alice glibly ran through the names of several villages, with an interrogative pause after each, and the newcomer shook his head in every case, without, however, further attempting to enlighten her.
She stopped at length, evidently at a loss, and the man, setting down his glass, laughed suddenly, a joyous, good-humoured laugh, pleasant to hear.
“You be fair beat, my maid,” said he. “But I do ’low you’d not be so very much the wiser if I was to tell ’ee. I be come from Tewley Warren—that’s where I be come from.” He dropped his voice and his face clouded over. “That’s where I’ve a-lived all my life,” he added.
“Why have ’ee left now, then?” inquired Alice.
“I didn’t leave o’ my own free will—ye mid be sure o’ that,” said he.
Alice looked up inquiringly, and he continued after a pause, still slowly and somewhat hesitatingly, as though he found it difficult to lay hold of the words he needed.
“I did live there wi’ my wold father; and when he shifted to the New House, Squire wasn’t willin’ for I to go on a-livin’ there. He did want our place for one o’ the keepers—a married man wi’ a fam’ly—he didn’t hold, he said, wi’ lettin’ a young chap, same as I, bide there—he did turn I out—to speak plain.”
“Oh—h,” said Alice commiseratingly. “’Twas a bit hard, I d’ ’low.”
“It was mortal hard,” said he.
He raised the tumbler of beer to his lips, but set it down again untasted.
“To give Squire his due,” he said, “he did offer to keep I on for the same money what I did have when the wold man were livin’, but I wouldn’t have it. ‘No, sir,’ says I, ‘I bain’t a-goin’ to be takin’ orders in the place where I did use to be my own master’—’twas jist same as if I was my own master when my father were alive; he didn’t never interfere wi’ I, poor wold chap.”
It was perhaps Alice’s fancy that a momentary dimness veiled the hawk eyes—in any case it was only momentary.
“So here I be,” summed up the ex-warrener conclusively.
“Here you be,” echoed Alice; then, after a moment’s pause: “What be goin’ to do now?”
“I don’t know,” said the man.
“Where be goin’ to?”
“I don’t know,” he said again.
At this moment Mrs. Cluett’s voice was heard calling aloud for her daughter; that lady’s heavy foot presently sounded in the narrow passage without, and she burst into the room.
“Dear, to be sure! Did ever a body see such a maid? Us so busy and clothes not half done wi’! And here ye must stand gawkin’ and gossipin’ as if ’twas the middle of the week. There, drink up your beer, do, good man, and let’s ha’ done wi’ it.”
She addressed these words to the newcomer in a somewhat softened tone, and he nodded good-humouredly.
“All right, missus; I’ll not be long now,” he said, as he poured out his second glass.
“There, for shame, mother, let the poor soul take his drink in peace,” whispered Alice. “He’s come far—from Tewley Warren; he’ve a-been turned out now his father be dead.”
Mrs. Cluett, with a soapy hand on either hip, surveyed the young man curiously.
“I did use to know Warrener Baverstock well,” she remarked slowly. “Warrener Baverstock up to Chudbury—e-es—I did use to know en.”
“He were my father,” remarked the other, with a momentary gleam of pleasure in his eyes.
“He did use to come here often and often,” continued Mrs. Cluett, emphatically. “He’d sit there—as mid be where you be a-sittin’ now—and he’d take his glass, he would; a most respectable man he were. My poor husband were alive too in them days—ah, times is changed, bain’t they? Here be I, a poor widow woman wi’ my own livin’ to get, tho’ there’s them as did ought to be gettin’ it for I in my ancient years.”
She paused to shake her head. Young Baverstock’s attention seemed to have wandered during the latter part of her speech, and he sipped his ale without evincing any curiosity as to the hint she had recently thrown out. After the manner of her kind, however, she at once proceeded to elucidate it.
“’Tisn’t as if I didn’t have somebody as did ought to be a-doin’ for I. There’s my son—a big, strong, hearty chap—my right hand he did use to be—there’s a deal to be done about this here place, ye know.”
“I do ’low there is,” agreed Baverstock absently.
“’Tisn’t only the public,” she continued, “tho’ I d’ ’low it be a bit hard for two women to have to manage all they menfolk—but there’s a bit of a farm to be seen to. Well, when I say a farm I do mean a couple o’ cows and a few pigs and chicken and that; and we do always grow our own spuds and greens, you know, and a few ranks o’ roots to help out wi’ for the cows in the winter. A man be wanted for all that kind o’ work, and it do seem hard as I should have to throw away my dibs to strangers when I mid have my own flesh and blood a-workin’ for nothin’.”
“It do,” agreed Baverstock, this time with more attention. “Why don’t your son do it then?” he inquired after a pause.
“Why?” repeated Mrs. Cluett in a tone of deep disgust. “Because he’ve a-been and gone and got married—that’s why, the unnat’ral fellow,” she added witheringly.
The young man surveyed her without hazarding a remark; those strange eyes of his remained as impassive as ever, but the corners of his mouth turned slightly upwards.
“I warn’t a-goin’ to let en bring his wife here,” continued the old woman. “I didn’t never fancy her, and ’twas again’ my will he did take up wi’ her. ‘You don’t bring her here,’ I says.—‘Then I don’t stop here,’ says he. ‘All right, my lad,’ says I, ‘ye can march!’ So he marched. He be a-workin’ over to new brewery now—down in the town.”
Baverstock apparently considered that this communication called for no comment; at all events he made none.
Mrs. Cluett, who had wrought herself up to the point of exposing the full extent of her grievances, was no whit abashed by his silence, however, and continued excitedly.
“The menfolk—there! they do seem to think a poor lone ’ooman fit for nothin’ but to make a laughin’ stock on. Dear heart alive, ’tis enough to drive a body silly! Us can’t seem to find a decent civil-spoke chap nowheres, can us, Alice? The minute a thing is not to their likin’ up they comes wi’ their sauce and their impudence, and off they goes.”
The young man gazed at her with an increasing interest:—
“You be short-handed now, then, be ye?” asked he.
Mrs. Cluett threw back her head with an ironical laugh.
“Short-handed! We be, so to speak, wi’out no hands at all. The last boy as worked here marched off o’ Saturday. Turned up his nose at his good victuals, and answered I back when I spoke my mind to him about it. I’m sure I don’t know where to look for another. And the ’taters bain’t all in yet, and there’s such a deal to do in this here place.”
Adam Baverstock pushed back his chair and gazed at her for a moment reflectively.
“I do ’low I mid serve your turn so well as another,” said he, in a calm and impartial tone, as of one in no way concerned in the issue.
Mrs. Cluett surveyed him dubiously, but Alice surreptitiously nipped her mother’s elbow.
“Do seem to be a likely chap,” she murmured.
Still with the judicial air befitting one about to conclude a bargain, Mrs. Cluett put various questions to the would-be assistant, her countenance brightening perceptibly as she ascertained that he had some knowledge of the management of cows, his father having kept one during the latter years of his life, that he knew all about pigs, that he didn’t care what he turned his hand to, and that he was by no means particular in the matter of wages.
“I don’t seem to know what to do next,” he explained. “I mid be lookin’ about me here, and I could fill in the time till you can light upon a man to your likin’. There’s one thing,” he added with that flicker of the lip which Alice had noted before, “I bain’t one as ’ull ever give ye impudence—I bain’t one as cares for much talk—I bain’t used to it, d’ye see. The wold man and me—there! There was weeks when we didn’t so much as give each other the time o’ day.”
“Dear, to be sure! To think o’ that now,” said Alice, whose tongue was wont to wag pretty freely. “Wasn’t it terr’ble lonesome for ye?”
“I didn’t ever feel it so,” returned Adam, “there’s a deal o’ company in the woods, and company as don’t want talkin’ to,” he added with a laugh.
Mrs. Cluett now proceeded to enter into practical details. Adam’s bundle contained, it seemed, all his worldly goods, a large wardrobe having been considered unnecessary in Tewley Warren, and such few sticks of furniture as the old man possessed having been purchased by his successor. He was therefore unhampered by any great need for space in his new quarters; yet he looked round the attic assigned to him with a clouded face, noting which, his mistress sarcastically inquired if he didn’t find it big enough.
“Oh, ’tis big enough,” he returned; “big enough if a man can breathe in it.”
He opened the tiny casement, and looked out:—
“I can see one tree,” he exclaimed, in a tone of relief.
“And what mid ye want with trees?” she inquired. “You won’t need to be lookin’ out much when ye’ve a-had a proper good day’s work.”
And thereupon, informing him that it was time to “sarve pigs,” and directing him as to the whereabouts of the meal-bucket, she descended to her own long neglected wash-tub.
Alice, however, still lingered in the passage, and observed that, as Adam took off his coat preparatory to setting to work, he paused, with an odd little laugh to himself.
“I was near forgetting you,” said he, peering into one of its capacious pockets and apparently addressing something inside.
“What have ye got there?” inquired Alice.
Adam carefully hung up the coat on a nail, thrust his hand into the pocket aforesaid, and produced a very small rabbit—a little furry ball with downy semi-transparent ears and bright beady eyes.
“I had to bring he along of I,” he explained, as he stroked the little creature which sat quite contentedly in his brown palm.
“How did you make en so tame?” asked Alice.
“I’ve had en nigh upon a week now. ’Tis thanks to I he warn’t made a stoat’s breakfast on. They stoats—they be terr’ble varmint. I be always on the look-out for ’em. Well, this here little chap was bein’ dragged along by a big ’un when I chanced to spy the pair of ’em. I made an end of Maister Stoat and I did take the little ’un home-along. He couldn’t feed hisself, poor little thing, but we made shift, didn’t us, little ’un? There, he can drink out of a teaspoon so sensible as a Christian.”
“Do ’ee let I give en a drap o’ milk now,” cried Alice eagerly.
The little rabbit justified his owner’s proud assertion, and after refreshing himself in the manner indicated, was comfortably stowed away in a hay-lined basket.
“I were pure glad to bring he along of I,” said Adam, for the nonce communicative; “he’ll mind me o’ the woods, d’ye see. And I’ve a-brought these, too.”
Thrusting his hand inside his waistcoat he brought out a few young fir shoots, green and tender, and deliciously aromatic as he bruised them with his strong fingers.
“Smell!” he exclaimed, thrusting them suddenly under Alice’s pretty little freckled nose.
She sniffed, and remarked without enthusiasm that it was a nice smell enough.
“There’s n’ar another like it,” said Adam gruffly; and replacing them in his bosom he strode away to attend to the wants of the pigs.
Decidedly the new man-of-all-work at the Three Choughs was a queer fellow; all who came to the place agreed in this estimate of him. He worked well, but yet, as Mrs. Cluett frequently averred, as if “he didn’t have no heart in it”; he was steady, civil, and obliging enough, but so silent, so unaccountably silent, that the regular visitors to the little inn could make nothing of him.
The only person who could ever induce him to talk was Alice Cluett, and then it was at rare moments, and upon odd, and, to her, uninteresting topics.
One evening he called out to her excitedly as she was crossing the little yard, declaring that he smelt the dew.
Alice paused beside him, inhaling the sweet air of the spring dusk with inquiring nostrils.
“They’ve a-been mowin’ over t’ Rectory to-day,” said she, “I see’d gardener gettin’ the machine out—’tis the first time this spring. ’Tis the cut grass what you do smell I do ’low.”
“Nay,” cried Adam eagerly, “’tis the dew. Who’s to know it so well as me, my maid? Haven’t I stood and smelt it time and again yonder in the woods at Chudbury? ’Tis the dew on the young leaves and the noo grass. I used to tramp it down, and then stan’ still to smell it. The Warren must be lookin’ fine now.”
Even in the dusk she could see his eyes dilate, and that tell-tale mouth of his curl upwards.
“And there’s scarce a tree to be seen here,” he sighed presently.
“Lard,” said practical Alice, “what a man you be, Adam! There’s plenty o’ things more worth lookin’ at than trees, I d’ ’low. There’s fields wi’ the crops comin’ on so nice, and the river, and the road wi’ all the folks’ traps an’ carts and wagons, and there’s the gardens wi’ flowers and ’taters and everything, and there’s men and women, an’—an’ maids,” she added, tilting her chin saucily.
Adam brought back his eyes from the distant vision upon which they had been feasting to another vision nearer at hand, and his face relaxed.
“Ah, there’s maids,” he agreed. “I never knowed any maid afore I knowed you, Alice. There’s times when——”
He broke off suddenly.
“There’s times when—what?” she inquired with interest.
“I could a’most be glad sometimes that I did come away from the Warren,” said he. “I’m glad to know ye, Alice.”
“Oh, and are ye?” rejoined she with a somewhat tremulous laugh.
“E-es,” returned Adam reflectively, “I’ve see’d maids now and then when I did use to come down to buy a few little oddments in the town, but I never took no notice of them—I never knowed any of them. I be glad to know you, Alice.”
Alice made no answer. She picked a leaf from the hedge and chewed it. Had it not been so dark Adam might have noticed the sudden rush of colour that overspread her face.
“The chaps hereabouts do often seem to go out a-walkin’ wi’ maids,” resumed Adam. “I were a-thinkin’—you and me mid go a-walkin’ sometimes.”
“We mid,” she agreed.
“Sunday, maybe?” suggested Adam, with a sudden note of exultation in his voice. “If you could get off for a good long bit, Alice, we mid step up to Oakleigh Woods. I haven’t been there yet, but they do tell I they’re splendid.”
“They’re nice enough,” said Alice, somewhat dubiously. “We’ll have to see what mother says,” she added.
“Do ye ax her then,” suggested Adam.
Alice moved away from him, and glanced back over her shoulder.
“Maybe I will,” said she.
Mrs. Cluett, on being consulted, was at first doubtful and inclined to be irate.
“This do seem like coortin’,” she remarked severely.
Alice twisted the corner of her apron without replying. It certainly did look rather like courting.
“Be you and that chap thinking o’ bein’ sweethearts?” resumed Mrs. Cluett.
Alice raised defiant dark eyes: “’Twouldn’t be no such very great harm if we was,” she returned. “He be a likely chap, Adam be; he’ve a-got a few pounds laid by, and if him an’ me was to make a match of it you wouldn’t need to pay en no wage.”
This was a practical aspect of the affair which had not hitherto struck Mrs. Cluett; her countenance relaxed.
“But he haven’t axed I yet,” said Alice discreetly.
Mrs. Cluett drew a long breath.
“Well I haven’t got no objections to your walking out wi’ he on Sunday, my dear,” she remarked condescendingly; and Alice dropped her apron and went away smiling.
Sunday came, and the pair duly set forth, Mrs. Cluett watching their departure from the kitchen window, not without some elation, for indeed her maid was, as she said to herself, a fine piece, and Adam, as he strode along by her side, was “so well set-up as a granadier”.
Alice chattered away gaily while they walked, tucking up her pretty blue skirt to show her starched white petticoat, while her curly head, under its rose-crowned hat, turned this way and that as they passed friends and neighbours. Other heads turned to gaze after her, and many jests and laughs were exchanged, and not a few sly innuendos as to the possible outcome of events. Alice would laugh and blush then, and glance surreptitiously at Adam; but the ex-warrener was more taciturn even than usual that day, and though his face wore a contented expression, he appeared to take little heed of his surroundings.
Presently the girl became silent, and by-and-by distinctly cross; she lagged a little behind Adam; once or twice she stumbled, and once paused, having tripped over a stone.
“What be to do?” inquired Adam, bringing down his eyes all at once from the horizon, where the irregular parti-coloured lines of Oakleigh Wood had hitherto held his gaze.
“You do walk so fast,” complained Alice, “and the road be so rough—and—” in a still more aggrieved tone—“all the other boys and maids what we do meet be a-walkin’ arm-in-crook.”
“Come,” said Adam diffidently, “us can do that too, I suppose.”
Alice curved her arm, and he, after a little practice, supported her elbow in the recognised fashion prescribed for courting-folk. He looked down at her with a softened expression as they advanced afresh.
“Be enjoying of yourself, my maid?” he inquired.
“E-es,” returned Alice dubiously. “Be you?”
“Jist about!” said Adam, at which she brightened visibly.
They now turned off the dusty road that for the last half-mile had climbed up almost perpendicularly, with the downs rolling away on one side and a carefully enclosed fir plantation skirting it on the other. A sheep-track that presently lost itself, wound away over the downs between patches of grass and low-growing thorn and elder bushes to where Oakleigh Wood spread its exquisite, undulating length invitingly before them. Adam quickened his pace; his whole face lightened and brightened in a manner of which it had not hitherto seemed capable; presently he began to sing in a rich ringing joyous voice, and Alice, clutching at his arm to stay his progress, exclaimed in amazement:—
“You do seem quite another man to-day!” she cried half petulantly.
“I d’ ’low I be another man,” answered he. “Let’s run, maidie, let’s run. Let’s get there.”
He caught her by the hand, and the girl, infected by his excitement, raced with him at her topmost speed. Off they flew over the springing turf and only paused, laughing, when they reached the shelter of the belt of firs which stood at the outskirts of the wood. The cool green fragrance was refreshing after that breathless race in the fierce sunshine; Alice’s eyes were dancing and her heart leaping, but Adam had suddenly become grave again; when he spoke it was in a subdued voice almost as if he were in church, the girl thought. Nevertheless he looked very tenderly at her as he touched her lightly on the shoulder.
“Now, maidie,” said he, “I be goin’ to show ye such things as ye did never see in your life—I be a-goin’ to let ye into a few of the secrets o’ this place.”
“Ye’ve never been here yourself afore,” protested Alice.
“I know ’em all the same,” returned Adam. “I do know all about woods. A squirrel, see! Look yon.”
“Where?” whispered Alice.
“On the big crooked branch there. Keep still, and he’ll come nigh us.”
As they stood motionless the little creature did indeed come frolicking downwards from bough to bough, pausing to glance at them, leaping away in feigned terror, returning for closer inspection, then, evidently deciding that they were not, and could never have been, alive, and were, in consequence, not dangerous, sitting up, chattering, a yard or two above their heads. He was presently joined by a friend, or it might be a rival; a lively discussion ensued, a mad scamper, a protracted chase, the two finally disappearing in the inner depths of the wood.
“Let’s go,” said Alice.
She had been amused and interested, but felt nevertheless somewhat disappointed. This was the strangest courting she had ever heard of: it seemed hardly worth while to have walked three miles on a Sunday afternoon merely to watch the antics of a couple of squirrels. But Adam was perfectly happy; for the first time since he had left the Warren he found himself in his element and at ease.
“If you do know how to treat ’em, birds and beasts is tame enough,” he remarked. “There, the very varmint ’ull be friendly wi’ you. There was a wold weasel yonder in the Warren what did use to have reg’lar games wi’ me. He knowed I were arter him, d’ye see, and he were that cunnin’ he did lead I a dance for months and months. I do ’low the creature ’j’yed it. When I did take en out o’ the gin at last he did grin up in my face as if he were a-sayin’ ‘ye be upsides wi’ me at last, wold chap!’—I could a’most have found it in my heart to let him go, but I dursn’t, along o’ my father. Hush, look!”
A green woodpecker was climbing up the tree near which they had halted; the pair watched him until he took wing, and then pursued their way. Alice’s heart was sinking more and more; she yawned once or twice in a frank, undisguised way, and walked ever more slowly.
“Hark!” cried Adam jubilantly, “the cuckoo. ’Tis the first time I’ve heard en—he be late to-year.”
“Have ye got any money about ye?” inquired Alice eagerly. “Turn it round quick, if ye have.”
“What for?”
“Why, for luck, sure. Didn’t ye know that? You must turn your money first time you do hear cuckoo cry so as you’ll have plenty more to-year.”
Adam’s fingers dropped from the waistcoat pocket where they had been vaguely fumbling.
“What’s money to me?” he muttered, as, with head thrown back and brows frowning with eagerness, he followed the course of certain black specks which at that moment were flying high over the wood.
“Wild duck!” he remarked presently.
Alice turned on him in desperation.
“Well, I be a-goin’ for to sit down,” she remarked. “I’ve a-brought a bit o’ summat to eat wi’ me.”
She produced from the little basket which she had carried sundry slices of cake which she offered to Baverstock.
“I did bring seed-cake a-purpose because you did say you liked it best,” she observed in an expectant tone. But Adam’s dark eyes continued to rove even while he ate, and his only response was inconsequent enough:—
“Don’t it taste good out o’ door?”
Alice edged away from him and munched in silence, and presently tears of mortification welled into her eyes. Adam, returning on tiptoe from a cautious expedition to inspect a nuthatch’s nest in the bole of a tree, suddenly took note of her woeful expression, and paused aghast.
“What be cryin’ for, maidie?” he asked in so kind a tone, that the tears rolled down upon her cheeks, and a little unexpected sob burst forth.
“I don’t know,” she murmured; then, petulantly: “I wish I hadn’t come!”
Adam’s face fell.
“Don’t ’ee like being here? I thought ye’d be so pleased.”
The sense of injury now overcame maidenly reserve.
“You do never say a word to I. You don’t so much as look at I. I mid be a stock or a stone,” she added passionately.
Adam surveyed her with dawning comprehension; during the silence that intervened the rustling of the leaves could be heard, the distant notes of a lark circling upwards from the downs beyond the woods, the chirp of nestlings, the irrepressible laughter of a gleeful squirrel. Perhaps all this cheerful bustle of the sunshiny spring awoke in the man’s breast certain hitherto dormant instincts. He, too, was young, and love and springtime go hand-in-hand. He stooped, laid a tentative forefinger gently under Alice’s round chin, tilted it slightly, and gazed down into the tearful eyes.
“Ye mustn’t cry, my maid,” said he, and then he kissed her.
They came out of the wood as the sun was sinking, hand-in-hand as before, but walking sedately now, and with a glow upon their faces other than the glow which was dyeing the fir-boles crimson, and making the gorse flame.
Alice was in the seventh heaven, and as for Adam, perhaps he too had learnt a new secret in the greenwood, the existence of which had been hitherto unguessed.
“Well?” said Mrs. Cluett as the couple parted by the yard door.
“Well,” returned Alice, with a conscious laugh.
“You do seem to be gettin’ along,” pursued the mother.
“E-es, we be gettin’ along,” conceded Alice, but no more would she say.
She was subsequently forced to own to herself, however, that they did not get on very fast. Adam was incomprehensible to her, and frequently exasperating; and more than once he seemed puzzled and irritated by things that Alice said and did. Mrs. Cluett, for her part, blamed them both with equal impartiality. Now she would aver that Alice was a simpleton, now that Adam was a fool. Was the thing to be or was it not to be? she wanted to know; even if it was to be Mrs. Cluett was not sure that she cared so very much about it; but if it was not to be, there was no manner of use in Alice wasting her time.
Meanwhile the couple walked together frequently, talked little, and quarrelled more than once. On that warm June night, for instance, when Adam, rolling himself in his blanket, stretched himself in the orchard to sleep under the stars, Alice’s indignation was to the full as great as her mother’s; while the day the girl refused Adam’s offer of pine-cones for her fire, on the ground that they popped like pistols and smelt of turpentine, her lover’s resentment had flashed forth in words fierce and strong.
“You do never seem to care for the things what I like,” he summed up.
To each the other was an unknown quantity; the mutual attraction was almost counterbalanced by a shyness begotten of the knowledge of being misunderstood.
The crisis came one summer’s night—a night long remembered in the village, for there broke such a storm over the land as had not been known, the old folks said, since the days of their childhood. A brooding and oppressive stillness reigned at first, and then came lightning that seemed to split the heavens, and thunder that roared like a thousand menacing cannons. Alice sat crouched in a corner with a face as white as a sheet and her fingers in her ears; and Mrs. Cluett hurried round the house, closing doors and windows, and fastening shutters. As she was about to shut the door leading to the yard, a sudden flash revealed to her a motionless figure standing without, a few paces away.
“Dear heart alive! ’Tis never you, Adam.”
She had seen his face transfigured in the momentary gleam, the eyes exultant, the lips parted in rapture.
“Isn’t it grand?” came Adam’s voice, tremulous with excitement, as the darkness enfolded him once more, and the mystic artillery crashed over their heads.
“The chap’s daft!” exclaimed Mrs. Cluett. “Come in this minute. You’ll be struck dead afore me eyes. We don’t want no carpses in the house, do us, Alice?”
But Alice made no response.
“Lard save us!” ejaculated Mrs. Cluett, as a new flash lit up all the surrounding country, revealing the cattle huddled together in the adjacent fields, the hedges, the trees, Adam’s face, eager, enraptured, as before. She darted out and seized him by the arm.
“Come in, I tell ’ee,” she cried. “I’ll not have ye standing there no more.”
As he turned towards her half-dazed, she dragged him in, and had shut and bolted the door before he recovered his wits. The air was stifling inside the house; the paraffin lamp reeked; the gusts of storm-wind which arose every now and then puffed volumes of acrid wood smoke down the chimney.
“A man mid choke here,” growled Adam.
“To bed wi’ ye then!” cried Mrs. Cluett indignantly. “Us be a-goin’ too—’tis late enough.”
She took up the lamp as she spoke, and roused Alice by a jerk of the sleeve. Adam went creaking upstairs, and threw himself dressed upon his bed. The atmosphere of his little attic-room, sun-baked as it had been through all that breathless day, was like that of a furnace; he felt his brain reel and was oppressed almost to suffocation. The storm continued, flash after flash playing on his narrow window; he could see the tip of his one fir-tree, now motionless, transfixed as it were, now swaying in a puff of wind that died away as suddenly as it came.
The house was very silent now, and permeated by the odour of Mrs. Cluett’s recently extinguished lamp. Adam sat up gasping. He thought of the Warren—of the close-growing trees stretching away about the free and happy man who dwelt beneath them. Once he, too, had stood with the woods wrapping him round, and the stars of heaven over his head. Tewley must look grand to-night. As he thought of it the dark shadowy forms of the trees seemed to press upon him; he could hear their deep breathing, and share their expectancy.
Ha! there was a flash. How it would light up the beeches and play among the pines. Now the thunder! it would roar and reverberate among those billowing trees. The rain would come soon. First there would be a rush of wind, and ash and oak and beech would rustle and shiver, and the larches sway down all their slender length. And then, while the trees were bending and rocking, the rain would come—the cold, heavy, glorious rain. Adam caught his breath as he thought of it—how it would come down, hissing among the leaves, splashing on the hot ground! How good the wet earth would smell, every strand of moss and fibre of grass adding its own spicy fragrance.
He leaped from his bed and almost at the same moment the tree outside his window was caught by a whirling wind and snapped. Then something seemed to snap, too, in Adam’s brain and he laughed aloud. What was he doing there, in that suffocating room, when he was free to go that moment, if he chose, to Tewley Woods? What should hold him back—what should keep him? If he made haste he might yet reach the Warren in time for the rain.
In another moment he was out of the house, and when the next flash of lightning came it revealed a flying figure scudding along the whiteness of the road.
Alice cried bitterly over the defection of her wild man of the woods, but she consoled herself in time, and took a mate more to her mind, a practical person who sowed cabbages in the flower-border, and considered the view of the new brewery the finest in the neighbourhood.
But Adam Baverstock had passed for ever out of her life; as silently as he had come from the shadow of the trees into the spring sunshine, so had he vanished in the summer storm.